700MHz Auction ends, Google not among winners

If you haven’t been paying attention to the latest in technology news, you may not know that the big FCC auction has come to an end. The winners of the various 700 MHz spectrum blocks have been announced, and there is one name missing on the list of winners which is quite surprising.

Last year Google promised that they would place a bid for 4.7 billion for the larger C block, provided that the spectrum would be open to all applications and devices. They held true to their word, and while that does mean that the spectrum will be open, Verizon was the one that walked away with the victory. Their high bid came in at $6.6 billion.

This was a brilliant move by Google. They forced the spectrum to adopt an open standard without actually having to spend billions on it. Well played Google, well played indeed.